La Révolution surréaliste, n° 1, 1er décembre 1924

This special June issue of *La Danse* documents the first Paris season of Rolf de Maré’s Ballets Suédois. Under De Maré and choreographer Jean Börlin, the company emerged as the principal post-war parallel and rival to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Its establishment at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées gave this ambition a powerful symbolic continuity. Valentine Hugo designed the cover, lending the programme-periodical a distinct artistic identity. This copy retains the loose programme for the performances of 3, 7 and 12 June. Within it, *Jeux* provides a tangible link with the Ballets Russes repertoire: Debussy’s music and Nijinsky’s original scenario were combined with new choreography by Börlin and a setting by Pierre Bonnard. The issue therefore shows how the Diaghilev model was not merely imitated but reinterpreted by a younger modernist company. Preserving both the periodical and its separate programme, the ensemble is an important document of the transition between two major companies of the Parisian dance avant-garde.

This original December issue of *La Danse* served as the official programme for the thirteenth Russian season at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The publication combines the ephemeral nature of a theatre programme with the visual ambition of an avant-garde periodical. Its colour cover reproduces Picasso’s watercolour design for the Chinese costume in *Parade* and provides the issue’s immediately recognizable artistic focus. Inside are colour reproductions of costumes for *Shéhérazade* after Léon Bakst, a title illustration by Valentine Hugo and numerous photographs of dancers and productions. The issue records how Serge Diaghilev brought painting, music, choreography and publicity design together within a single modern conception of performance. The illustrations are reproductions rather than separate signed original prints. The red and grey-green typography remains crisp, while the cover colours show remarkably little fading for such a fragile publication. Despite its own signs of use, the surviving glassine has evidently protected the original wrappers.

This single issue of *Бригада художников* (*Brigada Khudozhnikov*, “Artists’ Brigade”) captures a turning point in Soviet visual culture: one of the last pulses of Constructivist-periodical energy before doctrine tightened. Published in Moscow by OGIZ-IZOGIZ, the journal was short-lived (1931–1932) and survives as a small, finite run of issues. No. 2 (1932) shows artists and designers still deploying the grammar of modernity—hard-edged typography, rhythmic layout, collective voice—under rapidly shifting cultural policy. The involvement of figures such as Aleksandr Deineka and Dmitry Moor gives the issue real documentary weight for the history of graphic art and propaganda imagery. At 63 pages in the original Russian, it reads as both a periodical and a compact artist’s dossier. A scarce, tactile survivor of an ephemeral platform, poised on the threshold between experimental avant-garde practice and the consolidation of Socialist Realism. Condition: good.

Programme for the costumed sports ball of the Union des Artistes Russes à Paris at the Taverne de l’Olympia, Friday 11 July 1924, staged alongside the Paris Games. The richly illustrated booklet comprises [12] pages with a cover by Victor Barthe; inside are contributions by Picasso, Marie Vassilieff, S. Fotinsky, N. Granovsky and Chatzman, with a nod to Manet’s *Olympia*. It distills the émigré energy of Montparnasse, fusing festivity with avant-garde graphics. Large oblong format; typographic work by François Bernouard on vélin Normandy. A finely preserved piece of ephemera uniting sport, art and spectacle. For bibliophiles, a rare hinge between dance programme, artist’s print culture, and Olympic memorabilia.